Mike Florio, Pro Football Talk

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Find it wherever you buy laundry products. Alrighty, this is the Zach Gelb Show Coast to Coast on CBS Sports Radio. Let's welcome in the man behind Pro Football Talk, and that is the always entertaining Mike Florio, kind enough to join us once again on the Zach Gelb Show on CBS Sports Radio.

Mike, always appreciate the time. How you been, my friend? Good, buddy. How are you? Well, I'm doing fantastic. So, I couldn't sleep last night, and I was actually thankful that that was the case, because I see the breaking news report that Josh McDaniels and David Ziegler have been fired. I was wondering if they would be back next year just because of where the contract was for both. So, when you got wind of that news and you had the immediate reaction, what was it?

Well, I woke up this morning, and I looked at my phone, because we have a thread of text messages among the writers at PFT, and I saw that, and my eyes didn't want to focus, and I was like, what in the world happened? I was stunned because the question isn't should Josh McDaniels have been fired. The question is should he have been hired in the first place.

If you're not willing to be patient with someone who is bringing the Patriot way to town, you shouldn't bring the Patriot way to town. We saw it with Matt Patricia in Detroit. We saw it with McDaniels when he went to Denver. We saw it again with McDaniels in Las Vegas. It takes time to get the kinds of players that submit to the way things work.

It's got a military overtone to it. The players check their individuality at the door. There's a certain type of player you're looking for. You rip anyone.

You rip everyone. It pisses a lot of guys off, and it doesn't work if you don't win. But I thought Mark Davis, between the buyout he had to give John Gruden a couple of years ago, the reality of a buyout with McDaniels and Ziegler, that would keep Davis from doing something now. And the one thing I'd love to know, who's advising him?

Who whispered into his ear that this is what he should do? And did Tom Brady have a role in this, a guy who's trying to buy a piece of the team? Did he say to Davis, yeah, go ahead, fire my good friend Josh McDaniels. I think it's in the best interest of the team.

Mike Florio here with us on the Zach Gelb show. It's an interesting thought that you bring up. And the way that I look at this right now is, OK, you made the move to get rid of McDaniels.

I don't have a problem with it. And I thought it was the right move to fire him now. But is Mark Davis going to get the next hire right? So you talk about advising. Let's say if Mark Davis called you up and said, what the heck should I do?

What would you say to him? Well, you make a great point because Davis is the problem. And as Jed York, the 49ers CEO, said several years ago when his team was in the midst of a run of dysfunction, you can't fire the owner. That's the problem. If the owner is unfit, there isn't a damn thing you can do about it other than hope he sells or wait for him to die. That's it.

That's your only option. You're stuck as a fan. So the same guy that brought us. All the way back to what, 2011 with Hugh Jackson. It's been one bad hire after another. And it's been one bad move after another. He had Jack Del Rio. Team went to the playoffs. And then, oh, he gets a chance to bring back John Gruden. Works behind Del Rio's back to line up a deal with John Gruden. Fires Jack Del Rio. John Gruden in round two didn't do anything. Was like 22 wins out of 53 games.

And then Rich Busaccio takes the team to the playoffs as the interim coach and doesn't give him another chance. So I don't trust Davis to make a good decision. My advice to any owner would be, number one, have people around you who are giving you advice that is real and that you trust and they aren't just telling you what you want to hear. But number two, take your time. Have no preconceived notions.

Look as broadly as you can. Turn over every stone and force yourself to not even begin to make a decision until you've talked to everyone that you believe you should talk to. Until you've investigated everyone you believe you should investigate. Because too many times an owner knows right away. And I wouldn't be surprised if Davis already knows who he wants next. They know right away who they want. That's who they're going to get.

And they don't look more broadly at everything out there because they may be missing one or two or more candidates better than the one that they plan to hire right out of the gates. Talking to Mike Florio right now. So last night I was thinking who should be on their list.

And I went through three names right away. Jim Harbaugh, Luanna Rumo, and then also Ben Johnson. If you had to make an early prediction on who you think it will be, what's your call? Well, I mean, Harbaugh makes sense. He started his coaching career with the Raiders 20 years ago as a very low level assistant before he began working his way up the ranks. You have to ask yourself conceptually, do you want a defensive coach? And then you have an offensive coordinator who's working with your quarterback. Wherever your quarterback is going to be.

Let's say they finished badly enough this year that they're in position to get a great quarterback. So you have an offensive coordinator who joined at the hip with your quarterback and it works so well. Oh, your offensive coordinator is gone now. He's a head coach somewhere else.

You've got to find another one. Look at what the Bills have gone through post Brian Daybal. Ken Dorsey may not be the guy and they'd be better off if Daybal would have been the head coach.

Now, I know it didn't line up that way. But if you have an offensive head coach, he's the guy who's tied to your quarterback. If it goes well, you don't have to worry about the guy who coached the quarterback leaving. So that's a decision, a conceptual decision Mark Davis has to make. And, you know, what we see all too often is the next coach is the exact opposite of the last one.

So good point. We got a fairly young offensive coordinator. Well, now Lou Anna Ruma makes sense because he's the exact opposite of Josh McDaniels.

I hope that doesn't happen. Jim Harbaugh is a proven winner at the NFL level. My concern is, as we get deeper down this rabbit hole with whatever is happening at Michigan, it's a horrible look for Harbaugh. How do you sell him to your fan base, to your customers, to the media that covers your team, if the end result of this is either he knew what was going on and he's lying about it, or it was so pervasive, only Mr. Magoo wouldn't know what was happening. I don't know which is worse if you're a big-time college coach trying to get back into the NFL. His track record at San Francisco is proven. I just think that we need to see how this investigation goes into sign stealing before we come to any conclusion as to whether he'd be attracted to an NFL team. But like you just said, should that sign stealing investigation even matter? Like, that's what's going on in college in the NFL, right? He's been to three NFC championship games in four years with the Niners and got to a Super Bowl. If I'm a Raiders fan, that's all I care about is that this dude was a winner in the NFL. Yeah, I agree with you. I just think at a certain point it becomes such a bad look. If the cheating is that blatant and that orchestrated and that pervasive, it just undermines the guy.

And I just want to see how far it goes. And there was a report over the weekend on the NFL's in-house website, I believe handed to guys on the payroll from the NFL, that if there's a suspension imposed on Harbaugh by the NCAA, the league might do the same thing, even though there's no rule to support it. I mean, the classic NFL, make it up as we go, antitrust violation, collusion, whatever. And I think the timing was to get the word out there now for anybody who's thinking about Jim Harbaugh. Hey, be aware.

Be aware. If you hire this guy, he may get suspended. So consider that as you put together your roster of potential coaches as you get closer and closer to the spinning of the carousel.

I mean, for me, if it's even remotely close and I got one candidate that I know comes in free and clear with no suspension, and the other one that may get suspended for as long as the NCAA suspends him, I'm not touching that guy. So I think that's the other practical impediment as well to hiring a Jim Harbaugh. Mike Florio, you know, I'm just wondering, so you have the Raiders, they blink first, they get rid of McDaniels. I think the commanders at the end of the year, if not sooner, will say goodbye to Ron Rivera. I got to think the Bears are going to move on from Iberfluz after this season. Are those the only two other jobs that you think maybe like I do are locks to see their coach leave and get fired at the end of this year? Are there other jobs that you kind of look at and say, yeah, I'd be surprised if their head coach is back next season? We got a lot of football still to be played.

So I don't know, like the Cowboys could fall apart in a way that would get Mike McCarthy fired, frankly, in Dallas. I don't know. Did you mention Brandon Staley? No, I didn't.

And that's definitely one that that should be on the list. Yeah. So and Sean McDermott and Buffalo, if they don't make the playoffs, they're five and three. And they had three straight games where they were dominant. They've had four really bad games since then, and somehow they won two of them and they won two of them, thanks in part to uncalled pass interference at the very end of the game against the Giants on an untimed down and against the Buccaneers on a Hail Mary, where Kate Otten was taken out by two guys and it wasn't called. So that's not the kind of dominance that you want to see from the Buffalo Bills. We'll see what they do Sunday in Cincinnati. But I think there's a way it falls apart for the the Bills from McDermott to be out.

I think Bill Belichick. I don't know. Did you mention him? No, I think he'll be back.

You don't. Well, here's what I think is going to happen. And, you know, I'm hearing chatter to this effect. Not that it's reporting, but when you're plugged into the NFL grapevine and you hear something like this, it's too good to keep to yourself. There's a theory out there that when the season ends, Josh Harris, the new coach and the new owner, excuse me, of the commanders, is going to call the Patriots.

Wow. About what it would take to to get Bill Belichick. So the Patriots wouldn't fire him. The Patriots would essentially trade him to Washington and avoid any further financial obligation.

Get something back. Remember, they had to give up some stuff to get him when he was the Jets head coach for like a day in 2000. And so there's a thought out there that that's how this is going to go.

Everybody goes in Washington. Josh Harris makes a play for Bill Belichick and Bob Kraft does not say no to it because he, in theory, is ready to move on as well. That would be juicy, to say the least, Mike Floria. Yes, it would. Oh, yes, it would.

I don't know. And again, Josh Harris had better be ready to give Bill Belichick an extended runway to turn it around. He can't get halfway into the second season and say it's not working.

I'm going to fire Bill Belichick and the wild card in anything that the commanders do. Zach is Magic Johnson, because even though he only owes four percent of the team, his megaphone is bigger than four percent. And he'll tweet. He'll talk. He he acts like he's a colon. And some of the media coverage makes it look like he's the primary owner of the team. So he's got a loud voice. He's been empowered by Josh Harris to have that voice. What does he think and what's he going to think the first time he sees Bill Belichick and he flashes that million dollar smile and Belichick grumble, grumble, grumble and disrespects him if he would.

I don't know that he would. But with Belichick, you never know what you're going to get. So they better be sure they're ready for his personality and that they're ready for it to take some time for Belichick to get the Patriot way in Washington. And the one thing we know about the Patriot way, Patriot way doesn't work if you don't have a quarterback. Patriot way worked as well as it did for as long as it did because they had Tom Brady. None of the other coaches who have been part of the Belichick tree have panned out because you don't have a quarterback. Before we let you run Mike Florio, Kirk Cousins with the Achilles.

I know you're a Vikings fan. I think this is it for him in Minnesota, regardless of what they say the other day. I keep on looking at San Francisco with the way that Shanahan rotates through quarterbacks and how much he loves. Kirk Cousins have tried to get him in the past to San Francisco. Would you put a few dollars down that Kirk Cousins is the 49ers quarterback next year? You know, we wrote after the Monday night game nine days ago that Kirk Cousins gave Kyle Shanahan something to think about because I thought, look, as long as Brock Purdy stays healthy, he's the guy. He's the young Kirk Cousins because Cousins is one of the oldest quarterbacks in the NFL. He'll be 36 next August.

I disagree with you, though. I thought going into the season, this was Cousins last year and that after the season, the Vikings were going to do whatever they had to do to position themselves to draft a franchise quarterback and get their first long term starter at the position since Fran Tarkin. The closest they had was Dante Culpepper, who was the starter from 2000 and 2005, had a horrible knee injury in Carolina, and that was it for him in Minnesota. I think this Achilles injury has the opposite effect. I think it cements his future. I think it strengthens the bond between him and Kevin O'Connell and the organization. He had a surgery today in Minnesota. He has the picture from the hospital bed with a purple wrap on his leg. I think he sets aside the opportunity to go make money elsewhere. And who's like, what's his market now coming off of the torn Achilles when he had a great season?

That was interrupted two days before Halloween. I think it strengthens the likelihood he's back in Minnesota. They ride this out, see what they've got with Justin Jefferson, Jordan Addison, TJ Hawkinson, maybe draft a running back who can come in and be a difference maker. The defense is better. Brian Flores probably isn't going to be a head coach next year because he's got that lawsuit against the NFL. Tough to argue that someone should hire him, although it shouldn't matter.

We know how the world works. I doubt that any other team is going to make him a head coach while this other lawsuit's pending. So the defense will be better next year.

I think I think Cousins is back. And I think the Vikings are better next year than they were last year. Hey, by the way, Mike Florio, when you say that there's a lot of football left, do you have any belief?

I'm not saying for this year, but maybe long term that LaFleur and Love will figure this thing out in Green Bay. Well, I don't know how much time a quarterback gets now. When I was a kid and first discovered football, Terry Bradshaw was in like year three and didn't seem to know what the hell he was doing. But he got to do it long enough to become a Super Bowl champion. Is two years what you get now? And if two years is what you get, Jordan Love gets the rest of this year and next year. He sat on the bench for three years. And remember, they redid his contract as they were approaching the fifth year option date. So they kind of did a split where they committed to him, but not for long term. They didn't pick up the fifth year option, but he's getting some good money.

I think you got to give him another year and see what happens. And the other thing that helps him, no owner in Green Bay. It's corporate. And they've made these decisions. They're all in with their plan. They got to ride this out. And there isn't that one person that can roll out of bed any given day like Mark Davis did apparently yesterday and say enough. I can do whatever I want when I want.

You don't have that in Green Bay, which makes it easier to stick with the status quo. Tell me before we let you run about on our home and all the proceeds you're donating. And it's a great job by you to a local animal shelter. Here it is. It's a book I wrote during Christmas season.

Twenty, twenty one basically started it right after Thanksgiving and finished it right after the first of the year. It's a story idea that I had rattling around in my head for a while. It's a Christmas story. It's a ghost story. It's somewhere at the intersection of a Christmas carol. And it's a wonderful life. It's fundamentally about family relationships, fractured family relationships, the importance of mending those relationships, especially during the holidays.

And if it's too late to mend the relationship because the person is gone or the relationship is irrevocably broken, coming to terms with that and moving forward if you just can't fix that relationship, if you've blown your window to do so. But my hope is we posted on the Web site last year, kind of like an advent calendar, one chapter per day. And I got some great feedback from people that really made a difference for them. It inspired them to to mend a relationship. And I hope that's what happens.

And every dollar I make, every penny I make goes to the Humane Society of Harrison County, West Virginia, which is a no kill shelter that provides care and feeding for dogs and cats awaiting their next home. So hopefully people will buy it and read it and try it. I think it's good.

I have a clear bias that I freely admit. I do think it's good. I hope people enjoy it. And I'm not getting any of the money from it. So it's not going into my pocket. If anything, it's going to cost me money because I'm paying the taxes on it and I'm going to I'm just going to give the pretax up to ten thousand dollars. I'm giving the pretax amount to the Humane Society and I'll pay the taxes on. It's too hard to figure it out otherwise. And I don't want to get out of it. So I'd rather do it that way.

But you know what? I'm on the Web site right now. I will buy one and I will add to that that fund for you a little bit for the for the donation. So I appreciate you jumping on board today.

Continue the great work with NBC and pro football talk. We always appreciate when you join us. All right. Thank you, Zach. Discover. This is Daniela.

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